Agnes took one look at the grey-haired woman in her old-fashioned collar and cap and adopted her as a surrogate grandmother, smiling properly for the first time since Alex had met her.
*
“Is she a relation of yours?” Elizabeth said next day, looking Mrs Parson up and down with an approving expression on her face.
“Not really,” Alex smiled, “but we’ve known each other a very long time.”
“Aye,” Mrs Parson said from where she sat pillion behind Alex.
“She’s a renowned midwife,” Alex went on. “She’s even been called in to attend the ladies of Jamestown.”
“Really?” Elizabeth sounded impressed. “Well, you’re a welcome addition to us all, Mrs Parson. I dare say Celia will be most relieved.”
“And soon perhaps also Jenny, right?” Alex teased.
Elizabeth gave her a flaming look. “What are you implying?”
“I thought...that maybe she and Jochum...”
“Jochum is German!” Elizabeth’s face fell and she looked over at Matthew, at present busy trying out Moses’ paces. “It’s a suitable match,” she said, this time directing herself to Matthew, not Alex, by the simple expedient of kicking her horse into a trot to catch up with him.
“What is?” Matthew sounded confused, drawn back from his contemplation of Moses’ smooth gaits.
“Ian and Jenny,” Elizabeth clarified.
“Elizabeth,” Peter warned from further down the line, “we’ve already discussed this.”
Elizabeth snorted. “It just goes to show, husband, how important it is to raise your children properly. Our daughters have never voiced an objection at your choice of men for them, and our dear Nathan never questioned your selection of a wife for him.”
“And look how happy that’s made him,” Alex murmured.
“Happy?” Elizabeth stared at her. “A marriage is about duty and assets, of obeying the will of your betters to safeguard the future of your family; not about something as frivolous as happiness!”
“I don’t agree,” Alex said.
“No, my dear, you wouldn’t, but then you’re so lacking when it comes to instilling obedience in your children that it makes my hands itch at times.”
“The day you touch one of my children with your itching hands is the day you discover what pain is!” In her agitation, Alex almost fell off her horse. Mrs Parson took a firm grip of her waistband and pulled her back into sitting straight.
“Someone should,” Elizabeth said. “It seems neither mother nor father have fully understood the responsibilities of parenthood.”
Matthew halted his horse, turning Elizabeth’s way with a formidable scowl.
“That’s enough, Elizabeth,” Peter snapped. “You’ll ride beside me in silence for the rest of the way.” When she hesitated, he rode over and yanked hard at the reins. “Now, wife, or I’ll have you walking behind us.” Elizabeth’s cheeks burnt a deep red, but she meekly allowed her mare to be led off.
“Well, that definitely nailed down the coffin lid on an Ian and Jenny match,” Alex said.
Matthew gave her an irritated glance. “It’s been buried a long time.”
“Really? It sure didn’t seem so. And, anyway, what does she mean Jochum is German? Not exactly news to them, is it?”
“He’s Catholic,” Matthew said.
“So am I. Technically at least.”
Matthew smiled and rode Moses as close as he could to Alex’s roan. “Technically you were a heathen when I found you. Not even baptised as I recollect it.”
Mrs Parson snickered in agreement.
Matthew held in his horse and looked down at Alex. “Ian could do worse than Jenny Leslie.”
“Sure he could, but he doesn’t love her – he said so.”
Matthew sighed. “I’ve promised I won’t force him into marriage – not him or any of our children. But I may still attempt to reason with him.”
Alex met his eyes for a long time. “You know as well as I do that if you asked it of him he’d do it, because he loves you too much to want to disappoint you. After all, you’re the only parent he has left to him.”
Matthew flushed and grudgingly admitted she was right.
“So be careful how you reason with him, okay? A steel hand in a glove of velvet is still a steel hand.”
Chapter 14
Ian was not concerned when Alex told him of her latest altercation with Elizabeth and the potential resurrection of his match with Jenny.
“She doesn’t want it, and if there’s one child in the Leslie household that can wind both parents round her little finger, it’s Jenny.” He laughed and raised his eyes to Alex. “There are ways of forcing the issue.”
“Ian!” Alex shook her head in amusement. “Just like Fiona tried to do with you.”
“That was different: she was bedding with more than me.”
“Yeah, entrapment; not very nice at all.”
Over by the stables Fiona appeared carrying a bucket full of milk, her eyes locked on the ground.
“She’s not too happy right now, I think,” Alex said.
“Nay,” Ian agreed with certain bitterness. “To be wed to the farm hand is less of an achievement than marrying the eldest son.” He stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles, sitting in a posture that was so like Matthew’s that Alex experienced a time warp. Except that she’d never known Matthew this young and innocent – he’d come with his own dark baggage when she met him.
“So, did you enjoy being the man of the house?” she teased, sitting down beside him. She offered him a carrot and bit into one of her own.
“Aye, I did, and it was a right treat to sleep in the big bed.”
“What?!!”
He laughed and assured her he hadn’t. They sat in companionable silence and ate their carrots.
“I saw her in the forest.” Ian tilted his head in the direction of Fiona. “With him: Lars. Should I tell Jonah?”
She thought about that for a moment. “No, it would only make their life more difficult.”
Ian’s mouth set in a harsh line. “It’s wrong; she’s a married woman now.”
Alex looked away. “Not her first choice, was it?”
*
She told Matthew some selected bits and pieces of her conversation with Ian.
“I’m not comfortable with having Lars wander about in the woods with a hard-on.” And, she added, she was certain it was him she’d caught a glimpse of earlier today as she was returning from a solitary swim in the by now uncomfortably cold river. It made her break out in a rash, to imagine Lars gawking at her as she came up naked from the water.
“What?” Matthew finished his currying and stood back to admire Moses’ gleaming hide. He slapped the horse on the rump and came over to where she was sitting on an overturned bucket. “He was spying on you?”
“I’m not totally sure, but yes, I think it was him.”
“Hmm.” His brows came down in a forbidding dark line over his eyes. “I’ll talk to her, and if that doesn’t help, I’ll talk to him.” He pulled her up to stand and kissed her brow. She sniffed at him and wrinkled her nose.
“When was the last time you had a proper bath?”
“Two weeks ago,” he said, “before we left for Providence.”
“Well then, it’s about time, don’t you think?” Alex inspected the pale blue of the October afternoon and grinned at him. “A last communal wash for all the Graham men?”
Matthew didn’t exactly look thrilled to bits, but nodded all the same.
The boys were no more enthusiastic than their father, but they all recognised the determination in Alex’s voice, and so they slouched off, dragging a reluctant Magnus with them.
“Oh, come off it,
Pappa
. You’re the man from Sweden. How often have you told me how you used to saw up holes in the ice to go swimming in the winter?”
“Why would he do that?” Mark said.
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Ask him. It’s all that Viking blood.”
“Viking?” Daniel said. “Are you a Viking, Offa?”
Magnus rolled his eyes at Alex and fell into step beside Daniel and Matthew.
“Of course I am. All Swedish men are Vikings – except we don’t do much raiding anymore on account of us having become Christians.”
Alex followed them down to the river, shouted encouraging remarks to her sons, threatened them all with the lye unless they used the soap properly, and knelt to rub her younger sons dry.
“Jacob, teeth.” Alex waved a willow twig in his direction.
“Must I?” he whined, looking at her from below his straight, blond fringe.
“Jacob Graham, cut it out. You’ve done this morning and night since you were a baby, so why this sudden aversion?”
“But why?” Jacob grumbled. “The Walton lads don’t do it, and the Leslie lasses laugh when they see us fiddle around with our wee sticks.”
Alex bared her teeth. “See? All my teeth. Next time you’re at Leslie’s Crossing, check out Mrs Leslie’s mouth. It might come as something of a shock. And even Kristin Walton has at least one rotten tooth.”
Jacob muttered some more but took the proffered twig.
“I sincerely hope he doesn’t ask Elizabeth to show him her teeth,” Alex commented to Magnus, who was sitting beside her. “I wonder if it will help, if what I try to teach them about cleanliness will survive down the generations.”
“Probably not,” Magnus said. “Some of it might, but not all.”
“Great. I have these huge babies and teach them to keep themselves clean and healthy, and then what? The genes die out in four or five generations?”
“Not the genes.” Magnus laughed. “Just the habits.”
“Whatever.” She should write them a book, a little tome outlining the benefits of vegetables and hygiene, and hope it would survive a few hundred years, a treasured family heirloom or something. She muffled a laugh.
“What?” Magnus asked.
“Nothing.” She tilted her head at him. “Maybe I should use you as an example. Seventy years old and fit like a fiddle, and all due to eating salads and brushing your teeth every day, hey?”
Magnus got to his feet and scowled at her. “Healthy? I’ve got cancer!” With that he stalked off.
“Bloody hell,” Alex muttered.
*
Later that afternoon, Mrs Parson laughed at Magnus and told him that, to her practised eye, he seemed far from dying, looking remarkably hale for a man of seventy. They were alone in the kitchen, the small space silent for once. Magnus sat down on the bench closest to the window and busied himself with the jackrabbits that had been hanging in the larder for the last week or so.
“It depends what you compare with,” he said. “After all, you’re comparing with the people of the here and now where the lifespan is somewhere around the late forties.” It was a relief to be able to talk to someone about the strange facts surrounding his and Alex’s presence in this time.
“Not me, I’m well over three score.” Mrs Parson regarded him through bright black eyes. “Why?”
“Why what?” Magnus looked about for the glazed jug.
“Why did you choose to fall through time?” Mrs Parson helped him chop the jackrabbits into small pieces and stuff them into the jug.
“I’m not sure, but I suppose that one driving force was the fact that I thought I was going to die anyway. And I wanted to see Alex again, to verify that she was fine.”
“And is she?” Mrs Parson whisked together blood and spices, added juniper berries and a generous amount of Matthew’s precious sherry before pouring the pungent mixture over the morsels of meat.
“She seems to be.” Magnus waved his hand in the direction of where Alex was chasing an escaped hen, eagerly assisted by Sarah. “But now that I’m here, trapped into staying here until I die, I wish I could go back, because the people who need me are not these people; they’re the people I left behind.” He fell silent, hoping she would tell him that of course he was needed here.
Instead, Mrs Parson nodded.
“And they’re the people I need too – God, how I miss them: Isaac and Eva, John and Diane.” Magnus stood up and carried the heavy jug over to the hearth, lowering it carefully into the pot of water that was simmering over the fire.
“That’s something else I don’t understand, you see,” he added in an undertone. “That she doesn’t miss them – us. Yes, occasionally I am sure she thinks of Isaac, and I know that through the years she’s often thought of me, but all in all she chose to forget us – for him.” He nodded to where Matthew had joined the chase, deftly grabbing the hen by its legs. “And I’m so angry with her for that,” he ended, hiding his face from Mrs Parson’s sharp eyes.
Magnus spent most of the evening feeling just how angry he was. In a silent mating dance, Matthew and Alex gravitated around each other. Eyes met and held, a smile flashing over Alex’s features. Matthew’s hand lingered on her nape when he leaned forward to add another log to the fire; Alex’s fingers brushed at his hair, his shoulders, when she stood to retrieve something from one of the shelves. They conversed with Magnus and Mrs Parson, they laughed and joked and, at one point, Matthew invited Magnus to a game of chess while Alex remained by the fire sewing. But all the time it rippled between them – the unspoken but tangible desire. It was a relief when Matthew stood up, bade them all a good night and escorted Alex from the room.
*
Matthew was pleased with himself for having thought of lighting a fire in their room earlier in the evening, ensuring the small room was agreeably warm. Alex undid his breeches, tugged his shirt over his head and there he was in only his stockings, his member already hard. Her hands flowed down his back, warm and firm they slid over his flanks, the fingers of her right hand grazing his pubic hair, his cock. It sent tingles through him, prickles of warmth that travelled in concentric circles up his belly, down his thighs.
She knelt, his stockings came off, and he inhaled when she took him in her mouth. His Alex, the only woman who’d ever done this to him, who could set him aflame with but a brush of her fingers. Her mouth was soft and warm, her hands rested on his hips, slid round to cup his buttocks, and he groaned when she tightened her lips round his member. Sweetest Lord, but this was good! Blood rushed downwards, leaving him light-headed and dizzy. He sank his fingers into her hair, threw his head back, and concentrated on remaining on his feet, all of him quivering as her mouth, her tongue, her fingers pleasured him.
“Nay, Alex wait, I…” He raised her to her feet and drew the pins out of her hair to release a cascade of browns and golds and reds.
He worked his fingers through her curls, kissing her earlobe, the corner of her mouth, the point on her neck where he could see her pulse. He kissed his way down her body, undoing garment after garment until all of her stood revealed.
She swayed; he guided her down to the floor. The little rug on the wooden boards was soft and welcoming, and so was she, naked in the reddish light that spilled from the crackling fire. He caressed the smooth, soft skin on the insides of her thighs, stroked her hips, her breasts. She moaned, tugged at him, widening her legs, telling him to please, and still he held back. Slowly, he worked his way over her rounded belly, dropping a line of soft kisses all the way to her pubic mound. He kissed her there, his fingers moving in gentle, slow circles in her moist cleft. He inhaled, savouring her rich female scent in this her most private place. He exhaled, tickling her, and she lifted her bottom off the floor. Her fingers closed around him, flowed up his cock to touch the tip, and he groaned.
“Now,” she murmured. “Enough of this foreplay stuff, I want you now, now, now!”
It made him laugh, but he gladly complied and entered her, bracing himself on his arms.
“Yes!” She exhaled. “Oh, yes!”
On the opposite wall their shadows merged, and on the floor below him she shifted her hips to make him come closer, so much closer, a sound of want and need escaping from her mouth. He laughed, kissed her, kissed her again. His Alex, his woman, his heart.